Comics Cosmos – Kicking Ass Again

It was 10 years ago this month that the world was introduced to Dave Lizewski and his superhero persona Kick-Ass in comicbook form. He was a teenager sick of crime who wanted to do something about it. And when he realized he couldn’t do it alone, Dave joined forces with some other street heroes, most notably Hit-Girl, who ultimately got her own comic series as well.

Last week, writer Mark Millar and artist John Romita Jr. returned with a new chapter of the Kick-Ass story. This time around, our hero is Patience Lee, a woman recently out of the military who needs to find a way to support herself and her children after her husband has abandoned them. Barely scraping by with a waitressing job, she decides to put to use what she learned in the military to acquire funds from criminals. Thus, a new Kick-Ass is born.

When the story dropped that the new version of the character would be a black female veteran with kids, some fans were confused. Was it a reboot, was Dave no longer in play… what was going on? According to Millar:

Kick-Ass was always a legacy character for me. It’s like Doctor Who or The Flash or Green Lantern or James Bond in that it should be rebooted every once in a while with a new face.

The good news is, this time around, we have a hero with skills who seems to know what she’s doing. Of course, that doesn’t mean things will necessarily go her way.